captain on the bridge
by annicaspoon
Summary: It was inevitable that his room would become akin to a counsellor's office, although he often expected that he'd be the one giving counsel; not gaining it. Or, three times Leo took the privilege of having an older sister for granted, and one time he didn't.


_time one: the fanboy_

He's halted in his stride by the sign that has been slapped on and stuck to the door with a round of Donnie's duct tape. Big, loud and glaring with bright green and yellow letters, the 'PLEASE KNOCK' reminds him that for the next few weeks, or months, or god knows how long, this room isn't his anymore. He can't just let himself in like he's been doing for years.

In fact, the letting himself in factor is the reason for the sign in the first place. The process was so automatic for him that even after he had dragged a bunch of his things from his room to Raph's – even after he had helped April move some of her stuff in – Leo kept finding himself having to pause and remember that he was supposed to be staying in Raph's room. Not his own.

However, there was still one moment in the first week of April moving in where he had forgotten his usual check and recheck. And in turn, he had walked straight into 'his-but-not-his' room while April was rummaging through her suitcase.

She had jumped slightly when the door opened, her head jerking towards the sound. It had taken a second for the act to register before her eyes widened and she had slammed shut her suitcase, her voice rising to let out a shrill shriek. "_LEO!_"

He was on his way out and shutting the door as soon as she opened her mouth. "Sorry!" He had called out, backing away from the door. "I forgot!"

April had opened the door shortly after, assuring him that it was fine, but they both agreed that they would need to avoid that happening in the future.

It was only a few days later, after Mikey had also burst into the room looking for Leo, that April had gotten some supplies out of Donatello's lab, quickly improvised the sign, and made a big show in front of the boys of sticking it onto her door.

Leading to obstacle that currently hangs in front of Leo's face.

He tentatively brings a hand up to knock on the door, his muscles tensed up under his skin. Not that he's expecting an attack at all, it's just…

April can be scary.

He hears a movement from inside, and takes a small step backwards as the door opens. April leans against the frame and looks at him through thick-rimmed glasses. "Hey, what's up?"

Completely forgetting about the purpose of his visit, Leo's eyes narrow and he tilts his head slightly to the side. "You wear glasses?"

"Uh," she frowns and takes off the noted accessory, "yeah – sometimes."

"Huh." Leo tugs back on his focus, suddenly remembering why he's there. "I left some comics in here. Mind if I get them out?"

"Go ahead." She pushes the door open the whole way and steps aside to let him in. Surprisingly, the room looks hardly different from how it was when he was in there, and inwardly he thanks his luck that April is apparently as much of a stickler for tidiness as he is. He kneels on the floor to reach underneath the bed, pulling a crate from the far corner; a crate filled with everything and anything he'd prefer to be kept _out_ of his brothers' hands.

"Whoa, they made a _Space Heroes_ comic?"

April is standing over his shoulder, looking at the stack of comic issues spilling off the top of the crate. "Yeah." Leo hands her one as she sits on the bed, and she immediately scours through it. "The show concentrates on the plot and the Dauntless' missions most of the time, so the comics fill in a lot of backstory for all the characters and the ship."

"Cool…" April mutters absently as her attention focuses on the comic in front of her. "Wait! Dr Mindstrong has siblings?"

"He does!" Leo straightens up, grasping onto his own pile of comics. "Three brothers and two sisters! In issue twenty-six he actually has a family reunion with them." He quickly searches through the comics in his hands before pulling out the one labelled '#26 DOC_TORS _MINDSTRONG?'. He hands it to April. "Here."

He can practically hear Raph calling him a geek.

"Must be some family," April says as she starts filtering through the new pages in front of her. "_Almost_ as interesting as a family of mutants." A smirk grows across her face as she continues to read.

Leo hovers, shuffling through the issues in his hands while she flicks through the remainder of the comic. He's half-expecting her to cut off with a groan, or throw the book back at him, but she continues to read through it, engrossed by the story.

When she finally finishes it, she gives him a smile as she hands the book back towards him. "This is really cool," she says. "What other kind of stories do the comics follow?"

And oh – _oh she is trapped now_.

Leo tries, and fails, to stifle his enthusiasm as he gathers up the pile of sci-fi comics and drops them on the bed next to her. He sits down in front of them and rifles through the pile to pick out an issue, labelled #4.

"This issue tells of Crankshaw's background and the story of how he came to join the _Dauntless'_ crew. And this one," He picks up another - #13. "Crankshaw and Commander Grundch get stuck on a rebel planet and have to get back to the ship while Captain Ryan is on a vacation on the neighbouring planet!"

"A vacation?"

Leo shrugs. "Star Sector Vistak is really popular for its many vacation spots."

"And rebel planets, apparently." April smirks. She picks up another comic and holds it in front of him. "What's this one about?"

"Dr Mindstrong and his internal monologue while he works on the ship's broken engine. It's one of the more boring ones, but I guess you learn a lot about Mindstrong."

"Mhmm… and this one?"

"Captain Ryan and Celestial go on a date night at one of the port planets and have to escape a squad of Troklargians. It's supposed to hint at the fact that Celestial was a double agent for Troklargia."

"Celestial was a double agent?"

Leo splutters. "You didn't know that? At the end of second season she turns on them and Captain Ryan disintegrates her but it turns out that Celestial was actually one clone of a hundred Celestials that were all designed and sent out infiltrate the entire Space Navy for Troklargia and-" He stops as April covers her face with the comic and laughs. "What?"

"Yo-you-" She snorts. "I was kidding. I didn't think you were going actually- oh my god." Leo's shell is looking extremely tempting to hide in right now. "So how many times have you seen that episode?"

"A few," Leo grumbles. He adds, softer, "Don't tell Raph."

"I won't." April finally begins catching her breath. "Promise." She puts down the comic and picks up another. "So… what's this one about?"

"Commander Grundch helps out a kid he meets- why aren't you just reading them?"

"Watching you right now is much more entertaining."

He really can't defend against that.

-o-

_time two: the leader_

Encouraging turtles leads to continuing dependence, apparently.

Not that April minds, of course… at first.

The first time = fine. She can imagine that all three of his brothers deciding to boycott his orders on the same patrol would be frustrating.

The second time = okay. She guesses Raph's constant smart-aleck comments would be annoying, especially when they're continually being directed at him. But really, Leo's had to live with Raph for fifteen years; April would imagine he'd be used to it by now.

The third time = really? They all know that Donnie's smarter than them. He's probably always going to have some superiority in that aspect, and get somewhat annoyed with having to simplify aspects of his ideas all the time.

The fourth time = _oh, come on._

"Leo."

"Why does he constantly have to ignore what I say and-"

April sighs and looks at the clock next to her bed. How her turtle buddy has managed to stay comfortable despite lying on the concrete floor for over an hour is beyond her. "Leo."

"-and he does it every time we go topside despite the fact that hey, there are probably Kraang around that we need to stop and-"

"_Leo._"

He looks up at her from the floor. "Yeah?"

"_Mikey likes cats_."

"Yeah, but-"

"No buts." Leo pouts as she cuts him off. "Mikey likes cats, and unless he's attacked by a giant cat one day, he's probably still going to try and be friends with _every cat he sees_. Okay?"

"But what if we come across some Kraang? Or Foot? What if Dogpound or Fishface or Rusket Blockman shows up?"

"I thought his name was Buster Frogman."

Leo shrugs. "What if he shows up while Mikey's distracted trying to make friends with another cat?"

"In that case," April sighs, "I'm pretty sure he'll be able to drag himself away from the cat and help fight off Biscuit Lockboy." She readjusts the pillow behind her head, but finds that there's still one lump sticking into her head from a weird angle. "He might even save a cat in the process," she adds, pulling the pillow up in front of her to fluff out the lump.

"Well… yeah, he might. But that's not the point! Apri- mff!"

Assaulted by a face-full of cotton, Leo wrestles the dropped pillow off his head and throws it back at April. His attacker ignores the pillow to glare down at him.

"Leonardo. It is a quarter to one. For the love of god, _please go to bed_."

"It's that time already?" April glares harder. "Okay! I'm going!" Cringing sightly, Leo gets up to leave the room. Just before he reaches the door however, he turns back around. "Hey. With our luck, how long do you think it'll be before Mikey actually comes across a giant cat that-"

"_Bed._"

"Right. Bed. Goodnight."

The door closes and April makes a mental note to keep her sneakers within arm's reach from now on.

-o-

_time three: the brother_

April has come to learn a few things while living down in the lair. 1) That teenage boys can be summed up in four words: smelly, messy, needy and_loud_. 2) That her higher interest in science (among – well – other reasons) means that she is almost always the one dragged into Donnie's lab to look at his latest experiment. 3) That yes, Raph does spend a great deal talking to his pet turtle, and no, it's not the best idea to bring that fact up in conversation. 4) That Mikey actually _does_ have a limit to his overwhelming amount of energy – and finding that limit usually involves giving him sugar and letting him crash it off.

And 5) That Leo has an absolute, crippling inability to brood properly.

Unlike his brother, Leo can never hold in what's bothering him for long. So, where Raph hides away for a few hours without trying to explain or reason why, Leo will always, without fail, try to "brood" for a top of fifteen minutes. And at that point he usually ends up blurting to Splinter – or now, April – about what's on his mind.

April has come to be so used to it to the point where she can almost pinpoint the exact moment Leo is about to crack out with another rant, giving her some time to get in a comfortable enough spot to be Leo's sounding board for the next hour.

So, a few days after the Kraang's aborted invasion attempt - while her dad is busy trying to organise their lives back on the surface, and things are finally getting back to… _some_ sense of normality - April's "brooding senses" start going off, and she waits for Leo to begin his ranting process.

But it never comes.

He manages to keep it up for almost the entire day, and she's not the only one who notices. Donnie, Raph and Mikey can all tell that there's something going on with their brother. Wrapped up in their own heads however, after the events of the past days, they all seem to come to a general consensus to leave it alone.

April almost feels like she should get Splinter in to try and talk all of the boys out of their respective messes, but he's been acting just as bad as his sons. Not that she's been timing it, but April is certain he's been sealing himself off more hours of the day than normal.

Finally, she gets fed up with it enough that she decides to take matters into her own hands, grabbing onto the blue masktails and dragging an alarmed Leo into her room.

"April!" He hisses, stumbling after his mask. "What the- oof!"

Having tripped backwards as they've walked into her room, the eldest of her turtle friends sits on the floor looking rather miffed as he pouts up at her. "What was that for?" he grumbles, straightening his mask.

April just looks at him, folding her arms, waiting.

"What?"

She sighs. "What's going on with you?"

"Nothing," Leo mumbles and pushes himself back to his feet.

"You're_ brooding_, Leo."

"No, I'm not." She glares at him harder, and he sighs. "Fine. I am. So what?" He avoids her eyes to glance around the room. April has abandoned her task of packing up for the eighth time today, and the room is looking none the better for it. She kicks a pile of socks closer to her suitcase as she waits for Leo to open his gob already.

"How's the packing going?"

_Or _for him to avoid the topic completely.

Resisting the urge to smack her friend over the head, she sits down on the bed. "It's... going," she says. "Don't worry, I'll be out of here and you can have your own room back soon enough."

She takes a small victory when Leo actually cracks a smile, sitting on the bed next to her. "Sharing with Raph isn't too bad anymore," he mutters.

"Isn't too bad?" April stifles a laugh. "The last few weeks have been either you complaining about how messy his room is, or him complaining because you keep trying to _tidy _it!"

She looks over at Leo, waiting for him to defend his side of his and Raph's main source of argument for the past weeks. But, instead of gesticulating wildly as he insists that Raph's room is "an absolute hazard" and "a disgrace to humanity", he's still and silent; staring ahead. April follows his gaze to note the _Space Heroes_ comic sitting on one of the piles of clothes across the room.

"Do you think he was scared?"

It comes out softly and abruptly, causing April to whip her head around to look at him. "Sorry?"

Leo suddenly looks nervous; April notes the small twitch of a muscle in his jaw. "Captain Ryan," he says, "in the final episode of Space Heroes. Do you think he was scared when he chose to stay on the ship?" His fingers are pulling on each other, catching on the wraps tied around them. A rock drops in April's stomach.

"Leo…"

But his mouth is already moving, and the inevitable mush of words has already gained it's momentum. "I don't think he was," Leo says. His fingers continue to attack each other harshly. "He was completely calm and in control the whole time. He didn't let himself get scared. _He's a hero._"

"Leo." It's a doomed attempt, but maybe she can talk him down. "It's _not_ a bad thing for you to have been scared. I know I was. And so were Mikey and Donnie and Raph. We were _all_ scared. That's _normal_."

His voice drops into a whisper. April has to lean closer to hear him. "…I was _terrified…_"

"And that's okay."

"No it's not!" Leo pushes himself up from the bed and starts pacing, his hands rubbing against his head. "I should have been focused purely on the mission! That's all I had to do! But I kept getting distracted from that because I let myself be scared!"

"Leo!" Thankfully, she snaps loud enough to stop him in his bedroom marathon. "Come here." It takes a while for him to move, but he manages to peel himself away from where he's standing and joins April back on the bed. She immediately draws him into a hug, silently cursing giant shells that get in the way. "God, you're dumb," she whispers.

She thinks she catches the sound of a sniffle, and tightens her hug. "That too," Leo says, his voice muffled by her shoulder. "But still…"

It's about time this ended. April sighs and breaks off the hug. "Alright." Leo looks at her with a confused expression. "Did you even finish watching the Space Heroes finale?"

"No… Donnie downloaded it for me but," he shrugs, "I wasn't in the mood to watch it."

"Well – sorry – but I'm spoiling you on it." April waits for Leo to complain and beg her not too, but he just stares at her, so she takes that as her okay to spill the tales of the _Dauntless_. "Captain Ryan wasn't scared at the end, yes. But that's because _he had no need to be._ When the crew left on the escape pods, he was able to warp the ship and himself out of danger. Something about less weight and more energy that could be directed to the warp because the escape pods were gone."

Leo frowns in thought, and April shrugs and waves the point off. "I don't know, it's a dumb plot twist. My point is, Captain Ryan _knew_ the entire time that he was going to be alright. _That's _why he stuck with the ship. _That's _why he wasn't afraid. He had no reason to be because he had known all along that he was going to be fine."

She tries to look into Leo's eyes, but he avoids them. He's suddenly interested in the floor, and apparently aware of where she's going with this. "_You didn't know that_," April hisses. "You weren't even sure whether the rest of us were going to be fine. You had no idea how it was going to play out and if you would survive or not." She finally manages to catch his eyes. "_You had every right to be scared._

"But still, you fought through that and did what you had to do. You saved the rest of us – hell, _you saved the world Leonardo_ – even though you were scared." Leo looks back down at the floor. "_That_ is what being a hero is. Okay?"

He doesn't answer, continuing to scrutinize the cracks in the old concrete. Only when April elbows him softly, he replies. "…okay."

"Look at me Leo." He does so, and April smiles at him. "You didn't fail, okay? In fact, you succeeded more than Captain Ryan ever will in his life."

She's somewhat relieved when his eyes widen and he pouts childishly at the last point. At least he's back to his habit of constantly trying to defend Captain Ryan to anyone. "But-"

"No. Don't argue with me. I'm right."

Leo finally smiles, the first real smile she's seen him make in days, and turns towards her. "Thanks April," he says, and she also smiles and pulls him into another hug.

"It's alright," she smirks, "little brother."

Leo frowns in confusion. Sure, he's used that name before, but never has it been used on _him_.

"Uhm. I'm _taller_ than you."

"Donnie's taller than _you_."

"… point taken."

-o-

_time zero: the daughter_

He's certain he's never heard quite an array of this many colourful words before, and he lives with _Donnie and Raph_. Between those two and late night TV, Leo was sure that he'd been exposed to every possible curse word that could be found in both Japanese and English.

But apparently April has come up with her own set of cusses.

He rubs his eyes and walks towards the TV, which April is currently kneeling in front of, engaged in a one-sided argument with. Even though the TV isn't countering her verbal attacks, it's still – somehow – winning.

"You need to hold in the 'On' button while pressing channel up or down." A jump, another cuss and a quick glare in his direction and April follows his instructions. The TV turns on with a loud mix of a cinema soundtrack and static, and Leo scrambles for the remote to turn the volume down.

April seems unfazed by the fact that they've probably woken up the whole lair, frowning at the screen showing a man sitting by a window, crying. "Is it worth asking _why_ you have to do that to turn it on?" She asks, not looking away from the screen.

Leo sits down in his usual spot in front of the TV. "Same story with almost everything here," he says. "Mikey broke it. Then Raph broke it more." He glances around the lair for any sign of anyone else being awake. "What's the time?"

"After three."

For a moment Leo feels like planting his face into one of the cushions and groaning. He was hoping it would be five, _at_ _least._ If it were then he would have been up somewhat close to a normal waking time.

Apparently he _does_ groan without the aid of a cushion, because he hears April snort softly. "Can't sleep?"

"I'm pretty sure Raph's room is where nightmares come from," Leo mumbles, bringing his knees up to sit just below his chin. "Nightmares _other than_ him."

April breaks her gaze away from the TV to glance at Leo. "That bad?"

"You would think that someone who's afraid of cockroaches would tidy his room to avoid them coming in." Leo sighs and drops his chin just down enough to rest on his knees. "What about you? Can't sleep either?"

Something shifts in the air, and everything pauses. Even the man on the TV reaches a moment of stillness in his act. The silence pushes against Leo's chest before April breaks it, standing abruptly and moving to sit on the beanbag away from the TV. Leo doesn't watch after her, but he know she's still there, and soon the TV begins flicking through channels, never on a single image for too long as April presses down on the buttons of the remote.

She still doesn't reply, and the two of them watch in silence as channels flash by. Leo's eyelids begin to grow heavy, and the floor whispers at him to curl up on it and go to sleep.

Before he's able to relent to the seductive whims of the concrete however, April cuts through its voice.

"Didn't Sensei ever tell you that you'll get square eyes if you sit too close to the TV?" Leo snorts. Only all the time, but between him and Mikey, Splinter had all but given up on trying to break them out of their TV-watching idiosyncrasies.

"They haven't gone square yet." Leo smirks, ignoring his sudden impulse to rub at the said eyes. April seems to consider his reply, before Leo hears the sound of the beanbag being pushed along the floor. It moves up next to him and April drops down on it, her eyes as fixed as his on the TV screen.

He lets silence linger between them a little longer before he shifts to face her. "Hey," he whispers, "do you need to talk?"

April shakes her head. "It's nothing," she says. "Don't worry about it."

"Are you sure?"

His eyes are tired, but wide and attentive. April stares at him before turning back towards the TV. "It's nothing, really," she mutters. "It's just... no offense, but living here kinda sucks."

She feels a pang of guilt when Leo flinches. "Oh..."

"It's nothing against you guys! Or, even the lair. I mean, I haven't been in Raph's room, but... the lair's fine. It's just..." She sighs and curls her knees up to her chest. "I miss home. And not just my room and my aunt's place. I mean _home_ home. And I miss school and my friends and..."

"Your father?"

"Yeah."

Leo tugs on a loose thread on the beanbag and frowns. "We're going to get him back, April."

"I know." She shakes the mood off and redirects the conversation. "But right now, I need some distraction, and sleep isn't working. What do you guys have to watch here? That isn't..." she jerks a hand at the TV screen, "well, this?"

Leo smiles and reaches into the pile of discs under the TV. "Are six seasons enough?"

-o-

The next morning, the two of them wake up with cushions thrown into their faces and the TV channel being changed with the volume up. Loud. Raph smirks at them from the couch, Spike sitting on his shoulder.

"Space nerds," he scoffs, as his face receives the cushions that are returned in his direction.


End file.
